Tim Gracyk | Grayson & Whitter "Rose Conley" (1927) Appalachian murder ballad G. B. Grayson, Henry Whitter LYRICS @timgracyk | Uploaded October 2024 | Updated October 2024, 1 day ago.
October 18, 1927
Recorded in Atlanta, Georgia
G. B. Grayson (a blind musician) is on fiddle
Henry Whitter is on guitar
Grayson sings
"Rose Connolly" is an Appalachian murder ballad about a man of a higher class than Rose, who became pregnant. His father did not want him to marry beneath his class and encouraged him to kill Rose since he thought that his money and position would buy the boy out of trouble. The ballad was modified and given the title "Rose Conley" (different spelling) when it was recorded for the Victor company.
I say "Appalachian murder ballad" since the song was popular in the Appalachian part of the United States, but the song was penned in Ireland in the early 19th century and made its way to America through immigrants. It seems the song “Rose Connolly” can be traced to Coleraine, Northern Ireland, as early as 1811.
It is told from a murderer's perspective of his poisoning and stabbing his pregnant girlfriend.
Down in the willow garden, where me and my love did meet,
oh, there we sit a-courting. My love dropped off to sleep.
I had a bottle of the burg'lar's wine, which my true
love did not know, and there I poisoned my own
true love down under the banks below.
Poor woman
I drew my sabre through her, which was a bloody knife.
I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight.
My father always taught me that money would set me free if
I'd murder that pretty little miss whose name is Rose Connolly.
NOW FOR LYRICS NOT INCLUDED IN THE RECORDED VERSION MADE FOR VICTOR:
He's sitting now in his own cottage door, a-wiping his weeping eyes.
A-looking at his own dear son upon the scaffold high.
My race is run beneath the sun. Low hell is now waiting for me.
I did murder that pretty little miss whose name is Rose Connolly.
____________________
The burglar's or burgalar's wine is puzzling. A mishearing of burgundy?
More likely, a burglar's wine is slang for drugged wine. In old days, travelers would stay at roadside inns at night. Crooked inn keepers would dope wine to give to them so that when they went to sleep it would be easy to steal their valuables. To "poison" someone did not necessarily mean to kill them.
The blind fiddler Grayson is a country music legend. He was tragically killed on August 16, 1930, while riding on the running boards of a vehicle outside of Damascus, Virginia.
Henry Whitter was born on April 6, 1892.
He was a pioneer in what would eventually be called "hillbilly" and much later "country" music. The June 1924 issue of Talking Machine World actually calls it "Hill Country Music."
Edison literature of early 1926 used the term "Mountaineer and Rural Ballads."
Whitter had sessions within a year of Arkansas-born fiddler A. C. ("Eck") Robertson, who had cut in mid-1922 for the Victor Talking Machine Company such instrumental numbers as "Arkansaw Traveler," "Sallie Gooden," and "Done Gone" (on two early selections Robertson is joined by fiddler Henry C. Gilliland).
Sales of Okeh records featuring Fiddlin' John Carson (the first singer in this genre), Whitter (the second singer), Ernest Thompson, and a few others made clear to the industry that a market existed for traditional music cut by rural musicians.
Whitter was born in Virginia's Grayson County near the town of Fries (he worked in a cotton mill there) and lived in Cliffview during his years as a performer and later in Warrensville, North Carolina.
He traveled in March 1923 to New York to visit the recording headquarters of the General Phonograph Corporation, maker of Okeh records. Tests made of Whitter in that year were shelved.
Later in 1923 Fiddlin' John Carson enjoyed success with Okeh recordings (in Talking Machine World's September 1923 Advance Record Bulletins, Carson's Okeh 4890 was listed under "Novelty" records, the two other categories being "Dance" and "Vocal"--the term "hillbilly" was not yet used), and Whitter was invited to return to the New York studio to record again.
His first Okeh disc featured "The Wreck on the Southern Old 97," recorded on December 12, 1923, and issued in early 1924 on Okeh 40015, with "Lonesome Road Blues" on its reverse side. Lyrics are about a Southern Railroad mail express train that derailed on September 27, 1903, on the outskirts of Danville, Virginia, killing several people.
Whitter took credit for the lyrics and may have been inspired by a poem written by a young Charles W. Noell, who lived in 1903 near the site where the train wrecked, or by a set of lyrics written by Fred J. Lewey.
On April 26, blind musician Ernest Thompson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, followed in Whitter's footsteps by cutting "The Wreck of the Southern Old '97" (the preposition "on" was changed to "of," and an apostrophe was added before "97"), and his version on Columbia 130-D was advertised on page 17 of the June 1924 issue of the trade journal Talking Machine World.
He died on November 10, 1941, of diabetes in a mental institution in Morganton, North Carolina.
October 18, 1927
Recorded in Atlanta, Georgia
G. B. Grayson (a blind musician) is on fiddle
Henry Whitter is on guitar
Grayson sings
"Rose Connolly" is an Appalachian murder ballad about a man of a higher class than Rose, who became pregnant. His father did not want him to marry beneath his class and encouraged him to kill Rose since he thought that his money and position would buy the boy out of trouble. The ballad was modified and given the title "Rose Conley" (different spelling) when it was recorded for the Victor company.
I say "Appalachian murder ballad" since the song was popular in the Appalachian part of the United States, but the song was penned in Ireland in the early 19th century and made its way to America through immigrants. It seems the song “Rose Connolly” can be traced to Coleraine, Northern Ireland, as early as 1811.
It is told from a murderer's perspective of his poisoning and stabbing his pregnant girlfriend.
Down in the willow garden, where me and my love did meet,
oh, there we sit a-courting. My love dropped off to sleep.
I had a bottle of the burg'lar's wine, which my true
love did not know, and there I poisoned my own
true love down under the banks below.
Poor woman
I drew my sabre through her, which was a bloody knife.
I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight.
My father always taught me that money would set me free if
I'd murder that pretty little miss whose name is Rose Connolly.
NOW FOR LYRICS NOT INCLUDED IN THE RECORDED VERSION MADE FOR VICTOR:
He's sitting now in his own cottage door, a-wiping his weeping eyes.
A-looking at his own dear son upon the scaffold high.
My race is run beneath the sun. Low hell is now waiting for me.
I did murder that pretty little miss whose name is Rose Connolly.
____________________
The burglar's or burgalar's wine is puzzling. A mishearing of burgundy?
More likely, a burglar's wine is slang for drugged wine. In old days, travelers would stay at roadside inns at night. Crooked inn keepers would dope wine to give to them so that when they went to sleep it would be easy to steal their valuables. To "poison" someone did not necessarily mean to kill them.
The blind fiddler Grayson is a country music legend. He was tragically killed on August 16, 1930, while riding on the running boards of a vehicle outside of Damascus, Virginia.
Henry Whitter was born on April 6, 1892.
He was a pioneer in what would eventually be called "hillbilly" and much later "country" music. The June 1924 issue of Talking Machine World actually calls it "Hill Country Music."
Edison literature of early 1926 used the term "Mountaineer and Rural Ballads."
Whitter had sessions within a year of Arkansas-born fiddler A. C. ("Eck") Robertson, who had cut in mid-1922 for the Victor Talking Machine Company such instrumental numbers as "Arkansaw Traveler," "Sallie Gooden," and "Done Gone" (on two early selections Robertson is joined by fiddler Henry C. Gilliland).
Sales of Okeh records featuring Fiddlin' John Carson (the first singer in this genre), Whitter (the second singer), Ernest Thompson, and a few others made clear to the industry that a market existed for traditional music cut by rural musicians.
Whitter was born in Virginia's Grayson County near the town of Fries (he worked in a cotton mill there) and lived in Cliffview during his years as a performer and later in Warrensville, North Carolina.
He traveled in March 1923 to New York to visit the recording headquarters of the General Phonograph Corporation, maker of Okeh records. Tests made of Whitter in that year were shelved.
Later in 1923 Fiddlin' John Carson enjoyed success with Okeh recordings (in Talking Machine World's September 1923 Advance Record Bulletins, Carson's Okeh 4890 was listed under "Novelty" records, the two other categories being "Dance" and "Vocal"--the term "hillbilly" was not yet used), and Whitter was invited to return to the New York studio to record again.
His first Okeh disc featured "The Wreck on the Southern Old 97," recorded on December 12, 1923, and issued in early 1924 on Okeh 40015, with "Lonesome Road Blues" on its reverse side. Lyrics are about a Southern Railroad mail express train that derailed on September 27, 1903, on the outskirts of Danville, Virginia, killing several people.
Whitter took credit for the lyrics and may have been inspired by a poem written by a young Charles W. Noell, who lived in 1903 near the site where the train wrecked, or by a set of lyrics written by Fred J. Lewey.
On April 26, blind musician Ernest Thompson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, followed in Whitter's footsteps by cutting "The Wreck of the Southern Old '97" (the preposition "on" was changed to "of," and an apostrophe was added before "97"), and his version on Columbia 130-D was advertised on page 17 of the June 1924 issue of the trade journal Talking Machine World.
He died on November 10, 1941, of diabetes in a mental institution in Morganton, North Carolina.
